Don’t Join the Dark Side

People check their smartphones a lot. One reason for this is that, in some way, it’s a gamble. You check your phone, and maybe there are no notifications—or maybe there’s a red blob over your favorite social media app. Maybe someone’s retweeted your latest witty tweet or saved your Instagram picture of your brunch or your pet.

Each time you get a notification, you feel happy—your brain releases a little bit of dopamine. So, you wait a little while and you check your phone again, hoping for the same result and reinforcing the addictive behavior loop.

This isn’t an accident. Many modern products, especially social media, are designed to be addictive. In Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products, psychologist Nir Eyal proposes the Hook Model:

A four-step process that, when embedded into products, subtly encourages customer behavior.

Through consecutive hook cycles, these...